It’s safe to say that I’m infatuated with cupcakes. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been searching out fun cupcake recipes, reading cupcake blogs (did you know there was such a thing?), and wishing I had all the necessary ingredients to actually make some of these fantastic little desserts.
These didn’t start out as cheesecake cupcakes – they were just ordinary (low-cholesterol!) chocolate cupcakes. Halfway through the process though, I decided that a) I didn’t want to wait for them to cool before icing, and then eating them, and b) not having much powdered sugar OR cocoa powder, maybe icing them just wasn’t such a good idea anyway. This is a hybrid of a couple of recipes from friends/relatives that we had at home.
Makes 24:
3 c. all-purpose flour
2 c. sugar
1/2 c. cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 c. water
2/3 c. vegetable or extra light olive oil
2 Tbs. white vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla
Mix all ingredients together and stir until well combined. Fill lined or greased cupcake pans halfway. In clean bowl, mix together filling ingredients.
Filling:
8 oz. softened neufchatel or cream cheese
1/3 c. powdered sugar (granulated sugar will work too)
1/8 t. salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 t. vanilla extract
1/2 c. mini chocolate chips
Mix cream cheese, sugar, egg, vanilla and salt together. Stir in chocolate chips. Mixture will be a little lumpy. Drop heaping teaspoonfuls over the chocolate cupcake batter.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. Let cupcakes cool slightly before removing from pan.